A study on syntactic and semantic features of sports newspaper headlines in english with reference to vietnamese equivalents

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY M.A THESIS A STUDY ON SYNTACTIC AND SEMANTIC FEATURES OF SPORTS NEWSPAPER HEADLINES IN ENGLISH WITH REFERENCE TO THE VIETNAMESE EQUIVALENCE (NGHIÊN CỨU ĐẶC TRƯNG CÚ PHÁP VÀ NGỮ NGHĨA CỦA TIÊU ĐỀ BÁO THỂ THAO TIẾNG ANH TRONG SỰ LIÊN HỆ TIẾNG VIỆT) HA NGOC THU HANG Field: English Language Code: 60220201 Hanoi, 2017 MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY M.A THESIS A STUDY ON SYNTACTIC AND SEMANTIC FEATURES OF SPORTS NEWSPAPER HEADLINES IN ENGLISH WITH REFERENCE TO THE VIETNAMESE EQUIVALENTS (NGHIÊN CỨU ĐẶC TRƯNG CÚ PHÁP VÀ NGỮ NGHĨA CỦA TIÊU ĐỀ BÁO THỂ THAO TIẾNG ANH TRONG SỰ LIÊN HỆ TIẾNG VIỆT) HA NGOC THU HANG Field: English Language Code: 60220201 Supervisor: Assoc Prof Dr Ho Ngoc Trung Hanoi, 2017 CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY I, the undersigned, hereby certify my authority of the study project report entitled: “A STUDY ON SYNTACTIC AND SEMANTIC FEATURES OF SPORTS NEWSPAPER HEADLINES IN ENGLISH WITH REFERENCE TO THE VIETNAMESE EQUIVALENCE” submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master in English Language Except where the reference is indicated, no other person’s work has been used without due acknowledgement in the text of the thesis Hanoi … … … 2017 Ha Ngoc Thu Hang Approved by SUPERVISOR (Signature and full name) Date:…………………… -1- ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First and foremost, I would like to express my great gratitude to my supervisor, Assoc Prof Dr Ho Ngoc Trung, for his enthusiasm, kindness and helpful advice which encourages me much during my time of implementing the thesis The second, I am greatly indebted to all my lectures at the Faculty of Graduate Studies at Hanoi Open University for their useful lectures, supports, encouragement and for inspiring me the love for English foreign language teaching and doing scientific research Besides, I also offer my sincere thanks the friends and colleagues who helped me along the way The finally and most importantly, I would like to express my whole-hearted gratitude to my family I could not have come this far without their love, their support and their understanding -2- ABSTRACT The present thesis discusses a certain field of linguistic focusing on a descriptive – contractive approach which is applied to investigating and analyzing syntactic and semantic features of headlines in English and the Vietnamese equivalence As a method of conducting the present research, contrastive linguistic analysis of headlines in English and the Vietnamese equivalence, to figure out the similarities and differences of headlines represented in these two languages Similarities and differences of headlines between two languages have been identified in this thesis The aim of this thesis is investigating on syntactic structures and semantic features of conceptual ‘Simile’ and raising Vietnamese learners’ awareness these conceptual The use of conceptual ‘Simile’ in particular have not yet been the specific focus in different researchers, so that is why this thesis seeks to make a contribution and help them improve their real communication exactly and successfully in English More detail, I also point out some syntactic and semantic features of conceptual ‘Simile’ in English sports newspaper headlines with reference to the Vietnamese equivalence; and the second one is to propose some implications for mastering ‘Similes’ features in an effective way In general, the position of English Similes is the same as that of Vietnamese Similes Nevertheless, these positions bear different meanings in the two languages That is, in English, the clauses containing the speaker’s focus of interest may be put initially whereas in Vietnamese, those clauses may be put finally The findings of this work are based on the descriptive method is utilized to give a deep and detailed description of conceptual ‘Simile’ with reference to Vietnamese equivalence, hence pointing out the distinctive features of the conceptual ‘Similes’ which causes difficulties for Vietnamese learners and suggesting some implications for teaching these feature to learners at Academy of Journalism and Communication (AJC) The result of the study is expected to give some following benefits The research result will help the lectures and students to solve part of their problems in teaching and learning conceptual ‘Simile’ in headlines The result of the research can be used as an additional knowledge to improve the students’ mastery of vocabulary Because, the students are able to get other new meaning from the same ‘Simile’ if conceptual ‘Simile’ are added in headlines In other -3- hand, by understanding about the using of this students can implement them in daily conversation They can also develop their mastery of ‘Simile’ in speaking, listening, reading and writing By using more than one expression, the can say one idea in various ways -4- Adj.P LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS Adjective Phrase Adv.P Adverb Phrase E.g N N.P P.P V.P Example Noun Noun Phrase Prepositional Phrase Verb Phrase S Sentence -5- LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES Table 3.1.2: Structure of conceptual ‘Simile’ Table 3.1.3.1: Percentage of semantic features of English sports newspaper headlines Table 3.2.1: Percentage of syntactic structures of Vietnamese sports newspaper headlines Table 3.2.2: Percentage of semantic features of Vietnamese sports newspaper headlines Table 4.1: Grading scale Table 4.2.1.a: The test score Table 4.2.1.b: Results of questions from number to 20 Table 4.2.1.c: The most common errors -6- TABLE OF CONTENTS Certificate of originality Acknowledgements Abstract List of abbreviations List of tables and figures CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1.1 Rationale of the study 1.2 Aims and objectives of the study 10 10 11 1.2.1 Aims of the study 1.2.2 Objectives of the study 1.3 Research questions 1.4 Methods of the study 1.5 Scope of the study 1.6 Significance of the study 1.7 Design of the study CHAPTER LITERATURE REVIEW 11 12 12 12 12 13 15 16 2.1 Previous study 2.2 Overview of syntax and semantic theory 16 18 2.2.1 Theory of syntax 2.2.2 Theory of semantics 2.3 Overview of headlines 2.3.1 Definition of headlines 2.3.2 Classification of headlines 2.4 Overview of conceptual ‘Simile’ 2.4.1 Definition of conceptual ‘Simile’ 18 19 20 20 21 22 22 2.4.2 Classification of conceptual ‘Simile’ 2.5 Summary 23 23 CHAPTER 3: SYNTACTIC AND SEMANTIC FEATURES OF ENGLISH SPORTS NEWSPAPER HEADLINES AND THEIR VIETNAMESE EQUIVALENTS 3.1 Syntactic and semantic features of English sports newspaper headlines 25 25 -7- 3.1.1 In terms of syntactic features 3.1.1.1 Sentential headlines 25 25 3.1.1.2 Non-sentential sports newspaper headlines 28 3.1.1.3 Word 3.1.1.4 Phrase 3.1.1.5 Clause 3.1.1.6 Sentence 3.1.2 In terms of syntactic features of conceptual ‘Simile’ 30 31 31 31 32 3.1.3 In terms of semantic features 3.1.3.1 Stylistic Devices 32 33 3.1.3.2 Types of meaning 3.1.4 In terms of semantic features of conceptual ‘Simile’ 3.2 Syntactic and semantic features of Vietnamese sports newspaper headlines 3.2.1 In terms of syntactic features 3.2.1.1 Word 3.2.1.2 Phrase 3.2.1.3 Clause 35 35 35 36 36 36 36 3.2.1.4 Sentence 37 3.2.2 In terms of semantic features 38 3.3 Comparison between sports newspaper headlines in English and Vietnamese 39 3.3.1 In terms of syntactic features 3.3.1.1 Similarities 3.3.1.2 Differences 3.3.2 In term of semantics features 3.3.2.1 Similarities 3.3.2.1 Differences 39 39 39 40 40 40 3.4 Similarities and differences between English ‘Simile’ and their Vietnamese equivalents in terms of syntactic and semantic features 3.4.1 In terms of their syntactic 3.4.1.1 In terms of their sentence patterns 3.4.1.2 In terms of their sentence elements 3.4.2 In terms of their semantic 41 41 41 42 42 -8- Group C: Issues that may be frequent, and that are rule – based, but that have less impact on a reader These not tend to interfere with meaning, but rather with the impression of fluency If these errors are repeated, resources and scaffolding should help students build the necessary skills Addition errors were found in the following example in question of the test * Articles: See Writing Center handout * Prepositions of Location, Time or Direction: - See Writing Center handout * Phrasal Verbs: - See Writing Center handout for a collection of common phrasal verbs and their meanings Group D: Errors that not appear on this handout are unlikely to be rule – based or to make a strong impact on a reader These may include the occasional idiom, cultural references, more complicated lexical questions, and exceptions to rules For this type of issue, unless they have specialized English learning language training or access to appropriate resources, tutors should feel free to act as the native speaker resource Errors were found in the following example in question 15 of the test 4.2.2 Causes of committing errors As the results have shown, after surveying three exercises in the test, the author found out that the ways of using syntactic and semantic features in English sports newspaper headlines in general and using “conceptual ‘Simile’ in sport headlines in particular are an urgent matter for students of English at AJC for gifted students The errors made seem to be popular for almost all students nowadays Also, according to the results, some errors occurred in both realizing conceptual ‘Simile’ in English in terms of structures and meaning and influencing of the mother tongue on target language learning It is usual in analysis errors to identify the following principal causes of errors * Mother tongue transfer: One of the major factors that cause students of English to commit errors may be that they communicate their ideas under the influence of their mother tongue Each language has its own systems of structures, words and sounds It sometimes occurs that - 50 - on the way to generalizing target language rules the students impose on the target language acquisition their knowledge and skills of their mother tongue in many aspect In terms of order, for instance, the students may think, especially at the beginner’s stage, that word order in English and Vietnamese are similar The first example on the similarity between two languages is word order in the sentence The order SVO is basically the same in the sentences of both English and Vietnamese That is why it is rather easy for Vietnamese students who are learning English to write and say * Over-generalization of rules: The second root cause for learner’s committing errors can be traced down by the termed intralingua interference One of the common error students of English can make is that verb conjugation is sometimes overgeneralized with the third person singular pronouns in the simple present or present perfect tense So it is quite accountable if you can see: This error is largely due to the fact that Vietnamese words never change their forms in the sentence A considerable amount of difficulty in the second language learning is related to select restrictions and to surface structure and contextual rules of the languages Both mother tongue interference and over-generation errors confirm that previous learning may influence later learning * Environment of practicing English: As for the lack of language environment, Vietnamese students of English study language in a low motivation They not have much exposure to many situations where they can practice speaking and writing in English As a result, they think and speak or write in the way they communicate their ideas in Vietnamese They lack confidence and willingness to open their heart to other people, and errors repeat themselves Lack of exposure to natural communication in English also makes it hard for learners of English to distinguish between spoken and written language Not few learners think that when they have been able to speak English well, they can write in English well That’s why it is all right when they say * Ability to produce language: Another consideration that should be mentioned here is that the poor ability to produce speech in some learners also causes them to make mistakes Some students may be good at memorizing words or patterns but bad at using them creatively and - 51 - flexibly The fact is that some poor language performers cannot use different words or structures to express themselves freely; they stick rigidly to known patterns or structures and they cannot respond quickly and effectively to different situations when needed This explains why they cannot adapt to a variety of language context For example, if they could use different kinds of words to express the same meaning, then they would use * Stability of student’s approximate system: The students’ approximate system can also produce errors in usage of regular and irregular verbs in the past That is why some students may say and write: choice for chose It is also noteworthy that language production is a flexible and creative act of human beings In many situations, speakers and writers of a target language have to accept the fact that there are always exception in languages in general and in English in particular That also means that system activity is just relative, not quite stable In Vietnamese words not change their form in the sentence whereas words in English change in different positions in the sentence This accounts for the mistakes Some learners make as they think those words are the same when they share the same form or function: * Inherent difficulties: This factor is concerned with the inherent difficulty for students of semantic items The students’ comprehension and efforts at comprehension may now be compared with his production They made sentences in the way they found it easiest That also explains why in many situations the students cannot use correctly such verbs as decide, determine, plan, choose, resolve which are not clearly distinguished in Vietnamese: * Students may avoid a word or structure they found difficult to say: Therefore, errors made by students are never limited because of many reasons, so in the process of teaching/learning syntactic and semantic features in general and conceptual ‘Simile’ in particular We should have appropriate methods or strategies to get achievements effectively The next section is some suggestions for overcoming the problems and some applications in teaching conceptual ‘Simile’ - 52 - 4.3 Suggestions for teaching and learning when using conceptual ‘Simile’ in English 4.3.1 Suggestions for teaching conceptual ‘Simile’ in English Teachers should have a deep understanding of conceptual metaphors, semantic features both theoretically and practically They should investigate the structure, the meanings and the uses of conceptual ‘Simile’ they encounters in their teaching; more importantly, they should find correct equivalents of the conceptual ‘Simile’ they hope to explain to their students Teachers should also know what errors students are likely to commit and the reasons behind these common errors so that they can help students to overcome their short comings Lexical ambiguity is caused by the words which have more than one meaning When this type of linguistic ambiguity occurs, it may lead to confusion and misunderstanding for students Thus, it is necessary to help both the teachers and students avoid creating the lexical ambiguity Some possible solutions to help the teachers of English and students elude ambiguity are dealt with Firstly, equipping plentiful vocabulary for students is actually needed The teachers should focus on AJC when teaching English The teachers could bring pronunciation, meanings, annotating and comparing dissimilar points among words to the students The teachers of English not contrast words and word meaning but they also could with annotating exceptional cases that students are regularly confused With each specific case of ambiguous word, adding examples for students would help them identify and distinguish the multiple meanings of the word In the second place, there is another easier way to help students to recognize homonymy that teacher also bring some sports newspaper headlines Listed below are some examples of teaching-learning activities using newspapers that could vitalize our teaching in the ESL Classroom It is hoped that more trainers/teachers will make good use of the newspapers to devise a variety of other relevant task-based learning activities for their use in the ESL Classroom The activities are prefaced (E) Elementary, (I) Intermediate, (A) Advanced, or Any Level, as a rough indication of the level for which they are intended In most cases, however, it is possible to adapt the activities to suit a particular level - 53 - Finally, to help students practice by preparing some types of exercises covering the areas of difficulties that students may commit errors when learning conceptual ‘Simile’ 4.3.2 Suggestions for learning conceptual ‘Simile’ in English The results from the questionnaires and interviews lead to the following suggestions: First, students should enrich vocabulary and sports newspaper headlines related knowledge and skills When encountering unfamiliar terms or concepts, learners should ask for supports from teachers, classmates or experts in the related fields These people will help to explain the problems and provide learners with most correct and rapid answers Second, learners should read as much as possible books, articles, on the Internet……related to the fields they are interested in By this way, learners can acquire necessary knowledge about wording, grammar, semantics, styles, syntactic features… These knowledge will help learners enhance their studying Beside, learners should provide themselves with knowledge about writing some English sports newspaper headlines … of different peoples in the world; a good background knowledge will help the learner to find good equivalents for conceptual metaphors they encounter Finally, learners should have knowledge about conceptual ‘Simile’ denoting sports newspaper headlines in particular both in English and in Vietnamese These knowledge will help them better understand the two cultures as well as enrich their vocabulary 4.4 Summary In short, this chapter points out the most common errors in learning of conceptual ‘Simile’ denoting English sports newspaper headlines into Vietnamese for the first-year students at Academy of Journalism and Commucation The reasons behind these errors are also identified through the analysis of two questionnaires with two tests on the knowledge of conceptual ‘Simile’ denoting sports newspaper headlines in English and in Vietnamese As mentioned earlier the twelve activities cited above are only some of the many possible ways of putting the newspaper to judicious use in the ESL classroom Other - 54 - sections of the newspaper that make good teaching material are advertisements, the sports page, TV page, etc It is felt that many teachers not take to using newspapers too readily because they feel that the level of language content found in newspapers is too difficult for their students This is not always true In any case this should not present a problem because what determines the difficulty is not so much the reading text as the task that is required of the students If the text is difficult then the activity/task set on that text should be one which is well within the ability of the students In other words the tasks should be graded In the final analysis it is up to the dedicated and innovative language teacher to devise stimulating and motivating learning activities for her students since the most important factor in the teachinglearning process is the active participation of every student And a sure source of inspiration in designing such ancillary materials is - the newspaper Therefore, among other things, encourage our students to read the newspaper Finally, suggestions are given to different groups of people, students and teachers in dealing with conceptual ‘Simile’ in particular and syntactic and semantic features in general - 55 - CHAPTER CONCLUSION 5.1 Recapitulation This study focuses on syntactic and semantic features of English sports newspaper headlines in general and conceptual ‘Simile’ in particular A survey has been conducted at AJC to check the first- year students’ proficiency in using conceptual ‘Simile’ in sports newspaper headlines The results taken from the survey conducted at AJC later have been classified to help finding out some possible implications for mastering these typical feature The syntactic and semantic feature of conceptual ‘Simile’ in particular can be found as follows By conducting the survey among target participants of first-year students at AJC, some major difficulties when using conceptual ‘Simile’ in sport headlines sentences have been found: (i) Facing with difficulties in misunderstanding conceptual ‘Simile’ in particular (ii) Failing to choose the correct particles (omission of particles, misselection of particles, and application of unnecessary particle) (iii) Lacking knowledge in syntactic and semantic features of conceptual ‘Simile’ such as ‘as/ like’ To deal with these problems, some possible implications have been proposed to help the teachers in teaching conceptual ‘Smile’ in English sport newspaper headlines an effective way such as supplementing exercises, practice frequently and teaching to distinguish between conceptual ‘Simile’ and the other conceptual such as: metaphor, metonymy… It is hoped that syntactic and semantic feature of English sports newspaper headlines in general and conceptual ‘Simile’ in particular have been pointed out and the possible implications for mastering them could be useful not only for AJC students but also for those who expect to acquire English as their second language 5.2 Limitation of the study All studies have limitation and this research is of no exception Although the research reached its aims and objectives, there were some unavoidable limitation and - 56 - shortcoming In general, the study has three limitations that provide opportunities for further research First, the study’s limitation involves the investigated time Because of limited time, the study was conducted only on a small size of the participants who took part in the test The study would be better if it was done in loner time Besides, limited time also undoubtedly influences the collected data 500 sports newspaper headlines in English and Vietnamese are not a large number Thus, there must be still an existence of other characteristics of lexical ambiguity in investigated sports newspaper headlines Furthermore, the research’s limitation concerns the scope of the study presented in chapter two named literature review, linguistic ambiguity categorized into various types including lexical ambiguity, syntactic ambiguity, phonological ambiguity Although I try our best to complete the thesis, I find that the thesis is still limited in length of the quantity of the samples Moreover, the syntactic structures and semantic features are restricted in the emphasizing kinds Furthermore, there remain a lot of the headlines in other aspects in need of further study However, these suggestions will be investigated further in the thesis 5.3 Recommendations/ Suggestions for further research Due to the limited knowledge of the researcher, ‘Simile’ in particular could be put into investigation with only two major linguistic features in terms of syntax and semantics Perhaps, the pragmatics of conceptual ‘Simile’ will be taken into consideration in another work In completing the thesis, my best attempt has been made Despite all the limitations of the study, it is hoped that it will make some contribution to the betterment of teaching and learning syntactic and semantic features of English sports newspaper headlines for the learners at Academy of Journalism and Communication Furthermore, conceptual ‘Simile’ is the large field that will be studied more - 57 - REFERENCES In English Mårdh, I (1980) Headlines: On the grammar of English front page headlines Lund: Glee Rup Linguistics Journal Volume Issue 126 Quirk, R., Green Baum, S., Leech, G., & Svatvik, J (1985) A comprehensive grammar of the English language, London: Longman Bell, A (1991) The language of news media Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Brisau, A (1969) Complex sentence structure in headlines English Studies, 50 (1), 3138 Catford, J.C (1965) A linguistic Theory of Translation Oxford: OUP Develotte, C., & Rechniewski, E (2000) Discourse analysis of newspaper headlines: A methodological framework for research into national representations Retrieved January 10, 2002 McLoughlin, L (2000) The language of magazines London: Routledge Morkes, J., and Nielsen, J (1997) Concise, SCANNABLE, and Objective: How to Write for the Web Nelson, T 1999 Xanalogical media: Needed now more than ever ACM Computing Surveys paper 10 Newmark, P (1991) About Translation Multilingual Matters LTD 11 Newmark, P (1988) Approach to Translation London: Prentica Hall 12 Newmark, P (1995) A Textbook of Translation Library of Congress Catalogingin-Publication Data 13 Paul, N (1995) Content: A re-visioning Production in the electronic products newsroom Paper presented at Speech to Interactive Newspapers ’95 Retrieved July 26, 2008 from 14 Radford, A (1997) Syntax: a minimalist introduction N.K.: Cambridge University Press 15 Reah, D (1998) The language of newspapers London and New York: Routledge 16 Rigley, P (1998) The Case of Online Newspapers and the Web University of Southern California, America - 58 - 17 Scollon, R (2000) Generic variability in news stories in Chinese and English: A contrastive discourse study of five days' newspapers Journal of Pragmatics, 32, 761791 18 Spears, R (1976) NTC's dictionary of grammar terminology Illinois: National Test Book Company 19 Straumann, H (1935) Newspaper headlines A study in Linguistic method London SulletNylander, 20 Sundar, S (2000) The internet – multimedia effects on processing and perception of online news: A Study of picture, audio, and video downloads Journalism Quarterly, volume 77, number 3, pp 480-499 21 Sundar, S (2000) The Internet- multimedia effects on processing and perception of online news: A study of picture, audio, and video downloads Journalism Quarterly, volume 77, number 3, pp 408-499 22 Ungerer, F (Ed.) (2000) English media texts past and present language and textual structure Philadelphia PA: John Benjamins 23 Van Dijk, T A (1986) News schemata New York: Dans Cooper and Greenbaum In Vietnam Nguyễn Thị Vân Đơng (2007) Phân tích đối chiếu so sánh tiêu đề báo chí Tiếng Anh với Tiếng Việt Diệp Quang Ban (2005) Giáo Trình Ngữ Pháp Tiếng Việt Trần Thị Lệ Thương (2009) Nghiên cứu Báo Thương Mại INTERNET RESOURCES In English http:///www.Italian.com http:///www.bbc.co.uk http:///www.reuters.com http:///www.ap.com http:///www.afp.com http://news.yahoo.com/ http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2 http://www.football.co.uk - 59 - http://uk.eurosport.yahoo.com 10 http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2011/05/09/sports 11 http://www.uefa.com 12 http://www.mirrorfootball.co.uk 13 http://www.skysports.com/ 14 http://www.guardian.co.uk/football 15 http://espn.go.com/sports 16 http://goal.blogs.nytimes.com 17 http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/sport 18 http://jeanhenry.wordpress.com In Vietnam Báo Bóng đá Báo Thể thao hàng ngày Báo Thể thao 24h http://thethao24h.vn http://www.bongda.com.vn http://tin180.com http://www.tinthethao.com.vn http://bongdaplus.vn http://www.tipbongda.com.vn http://thethao.thanhnien.com.vn - 60 - APPENDIXES APPENDIX Dear participants, This is a kind of a survey to check your proficiency of English sport newspaper headlines in general and ‘Simile’ and ‘Metaphor’ in particular in terms of syntax and semantics Please complete the following tasks in accordance with each instruction The results will be very useful for finding out a good solution for improving English teaching at our university Thank you for your cooperation WRITTEN GRAMMAR TEST (Time allocated: 60 minutes) -Task I Read each sentence or phrase below Circle the two subjects being compared Label it as either a simile or metaphor Example A: The noise at the concert is music to his ears Answer: - noise, music to his ear/ Metaphor The football player is a giant Ronaldo is quick as a cat Beckam runs kike the wind His mind is as sharp as a samurai’s sword MU’s fighting sounded like a car alarm Task II What is the meaning of this simile? Juniper said the weather outside was like an oven a It was very hot outside b It was foggy outside c It was warm outside d It was raining His necklace was as bright as the sun a He looked smart when he was wearing his necklace b His necklace was shiny c His necklace was visible in the sun d His necklace became hot in the sunlight The cat's fighting sounded like a car alarm - 61 - a The cats fought quietly b The cats scared off a burglar with their fighting c The cats were fighting near a parked car d The cats' fighting was loud and unending David is organized His room is as tidy as a library a Everything has its proper place in David’s room b David loves libraries c David wants people to be very quiet in his room d David owns a lot of books The two year-old was as playful as a kitten after his nap a The two year-old was very sleepy and needed a nap b The two year-old was very high-spirited and energetic after napping c The two year-old yawned, showing his teeth d The two year-old was ready to eat lunch after napping - 62 - APPENDIX ANSWER KEY Task I Read each sentence or phrase below Circle the two subjects being compared Label it as either a simile or metaphor Example A: The noise at the concert is music to his ears Answer: - noise, music to his ear/ Metaphor - football player, a giant./ Metaphor – Ronaldo, as a cat./ Simile Beckam runs like the wind His mind is as sharp as a samurai’s sword MU’s fighting sounded like a car alarm Task II What is the meaning of this simile? A It was very hot outside B His necklace was shiny D The cats' fighting was loud and unending A Everything has its proper place in David’s room B The two year-old was very high-spirited and energetic after napping - 63 - Approved by SUPERVISOR (Signature and full name) Date:…………………… - 64 - ... thesis - Chapter 3: Syntactic and semantic features of English sports newspaper headlines and Vietnamese equivalents Show syntactic and semantic features in English and compare similarities and differences...MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY M .A THESIS A STUDY ON SYNTACTIC AND SEMANTIC FEATURES OF SPORTS NEWSPAPER HEADLINES IN ENGLISH WITH REFERENCE TO THE VIETNAMESE EQUIVALENTS. .. SPORTS NEWSPAPER HEADLINES AND THEIR VIETNAMESE EQUIVALENTS In this chapter, the syntactic and semantic features of conceptual ‘Simile’ in English sports newspaper headlines as well as in Vietnamese